Daniel XIII Vs. YouTube (and Google Image Search)…Round 1: Fight!

While some of my erstwhile brethren here at The Retroist are masters of the YouTube, your ol’ pal the Ouija Board Kid doesn’t possess such luck. Three times have I turned to that infernal engine this day to sate mine lust for frivolous nostalgia, and three times have I been rebuked. So, to put it a different way, let’s take a look at just how badly I got screwed while wasting the day away on the internet:

Thanks Google…

See that pink horse up there? That’s what turned up on Google when I went looking for Range Ryder and the Calgary Kid in the Adventures of the Dinosaur Badlands, an amazingly threadbare Valley of the Gwangi for the pre-school produced in Canada, that was broadcast in the states a grand total of once in 1983 on Nickelodeon. I of course saw it that day (and loved its blend of plastic toys and Mike Myers), but saw no need to tape it, as I knew in my heart of hearts that when I would want to watch it again thirty years later, on a whim, that the advanced technology of the future wouldn’t let me down. I was wrong. YouTube offered only Neil Young, stunts and various other things outrageously unrelated to cowboys on fake horses wrangling a T-Rex.

As I shook my head in disbelief, the commercial jingle to the short lived 80’s revival of 70’s breakfast staple Freakies cereal became stuck in my head. So, naturally I turned to YouTube once again so I could experience the breathtaking animation that accompanied that divine music. Guess what? They didn’t have a single video of this product that absolutely no one ate 25 years ago (myself included). This was becoming an unbearable outrage.

Toni Basil, alien cereal mascots…the similarities are evident

Next, while half way through a ham sandwich, I was visited by yet another spectral thought forcing its way through the ether directly into my brain, and that thought had a name dear readers; Super Friends on Ice! There are three irrefutable facts about Super Friends on Ice that I will share with you now; 1. I saw the commercial for what was sure to be the greatest spectacle seen by mortal eyes only once, sometime in the late 70’s (although it may have been in the early 80’s…and the show may have been part of a larger ice related thing, but it wasn’t Ice Capades…unless it was), 2. I saw it on either WPIX or WWOR (or maybe WSBK…but definitely on a TV set in my bedroom…or the living room), and 3. The performance of the catastrophic results to my psyche if I were to miss this one of a kind entertainment event that I laid on my parents (which lasted for 4 days and 5 nights minimum) was such a tour de force that I could have sold out the Winter Garden Theater for 40 straight weeks if I were to enact it for the public (as an aside, I would stay at the Milford Plaza…The Lullabye of ol’ Broadway; the commercial for which IS actually on YouTube). Alas, as armed as I was with the above iron-clad facts, YouTube provided me with zero videos of Hawkman and Martian Manhunter careening around the Felt Forum on ice skates.

At least this search result makes sense…kind of…

So there you have it ghouls, and while I know your heart is filled with sympathy, and your eyes with tears, for my dire plight; I beseech you to cry no more. Rather, let me know if you have any long lost memories that are so obscure that even the internet can’t provide you with proof of their existence (oh, and if you find any of that crap I talked about above be sure to post a link)!

Daniel XIII: equally at home at a seance as he is behind the keyboard! Raised on a steady diet of Son of Satan comics, Kaiju flicks and Count Chocula, ol' XIII is a screenwriter, actor, and reviewer of fright flicks! What arcane knowledge lurks behind the preternatural eyes of the Ouija Board Kid?